[152] The two latter are in Demmin, p. 84.
[153] A specimen is in the British Museum, Department of Meteorolites. (Prim. War. p. 25.)
[154] The distinguished physicist, Prof. Huxley, extends on purely anthropological grounds, the name ‘Australioids’ to the Dravidians of India, the Egyptians, ancient and modern, and the dark-coloured races of Southern Europe. I have ventured to oppose this theory in Chap. VIII. Mr. Thomas, curious to say, would make letters (alphabet, &c.) arise amongst the Dravidian quasi-savages.
[155] Trans. Anthrop. Inst. May 1881. Mr. Milne brought home some fine specimens of worked stones, one of which (No. 17, pl. xviii.) is a chopper in the shape of the Egyptian flint-knives.
[156] Mr. Heath (who directed the Indian Iron and Steel Company) opined that the tools with which the Egyptians engraved hieroglyphics on syenite and porphyry were made of Indian steel. The theory is, as we shall see, quite uncalled for.
[157] For instance, the magnificent life-sized statue of Khafra (Cephren or Khabryes) in the Bulak Museum, dated b.c. 3700–3300 (Brugsch, History, vol. i. p. 78). Scarabæi of diorite can be safely bought in Egypt, the substance being too hard for cheap imitation work. Dr. Henry Schliemann constantly mentions diorite in his Troy and its Remains (1875); for instance, ‘wedges’ (i.e. axes) large and small, (pp. 21, 28, 154): he speaks of an immense quantity of diorite implements (p. 75); of a Priapus of diorite twelve inches high (p. 169); of ‘curious little sling bullets’ (p. 236), and of hammers (p. 285). At Mycenæ he found ‘two well-polished axes of diorite.’ But as he also calls it ‘hard black stone,’ I suspect it to be basalt, as his ‘green stone’ (Troy, p. 21) may be jade or jadeite.
[158] Casting the cannon called after the late General Uchatius is still kept a secret; and I have been unable to see the process at the I. R. Arsenal, Vienna.
[159] Stahl-bronce = steel (i.e. hardened) bronze. The misunderstanding caused some ludicrous errors to the English press.
[160] I reported to the Athenæum (August 16, 1879) this ‘recovery’ of the lost Egyptian (and Peruvian) secret for tempering copper and bronze, which had long been denied by metallurgists. Copper hardened by alloy is described in the Archæologia, by Governor Pownall. Mr. Assay-Master Alchorn found in it particles of iron, which may, however, have been in the ore, and some admixture of zinc, but neither silver nor gold.
[161] Of this I shall have more to say in Chap. V.